Hillbilly Elegy

Middletown was a different world.
Papaw was supposed to go to work and
complain politely to management about
rude pharmacy employees. Mamaw was
expected to cook dinner, do laundry, and
take care of the children. But sewing
circles, picnics, and door-to-door
vacuum salesmen were not suited to a
woman who had almost killed a man at
the tender age of twelve. Mamaw had
little help when the children were young
and required constant supervision, and
she had nothing else to do with her time.
Decades later she would remember how
isolated she felt in the slow suburban
crawl of midcentury Middletown. Of
that era, she said with characteristic